The Trump administration has threatened to impose an array of fresh sanctions to deter China and Russia from selling weapons to Iran after an arms embargo on Washington’s Middle East foe expires next month.
Elliott Abrams, the administration’s new special envoy for Iran and Venezuela, said this week sanctions would have “a very significant impact” on arms manufacturers and traders that seek to do business with Tehran. Details of the sanctions will be made public next week, he said.
The administration’s stand has been viewed sceptically by some former sanctions officials who say that China and Russia are likely to refrain from shipping arms to Iran as they wait to see whether Donald Trump is re-elected, and that some of the new US sanctions may be duplicative.
The administration’s plan for new sanctions is the latest twist in its Iran policy, which has left the US isolated on that issue in the UN Security Council and at odds with some of its closest European allies.
At first, US officials sought to persuade the Security Council to extend an international arms embargo on Iran, which was due to expire on Friday night and which was part of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers.
After that bid was rejected last month by the Security Council, US officials sought to invoke a legal process that would reimpose all of the sanctions that were in place before the Iran deal was concluded.
Read the article by Michael R. Gordon and Laurence Norman in The Australian (from The Wall Street Journal).